Browsing by Subject "Imagination"

My dissertation, Abolitionist Futures: Black Cultural Imagination at the End of the World, examines abolitionist imagination in the cultural production of black American writers, creatives, activists, and thinkers. From its inception in the nineteenth century, abolitionism has evolved from a social movement to abolish the institution of chattel slavery to a political tradition. Presently, abolition is as a critical method of understanding the genealogy of contemporary practices of racialized social management as an extension of racial subjugation that originated during the era of plantation slavery in the United States. Because the concept of abolition fundamentally grapples with the question of radical social transformation, it also raises a set of questions about the dual tension between hope and despair, optimism and pessimism, fugitivity and enclosure. At its core, abolition is about sustaining the capacity to imagine an otherwise, despite and in spite of violence, captivity, and coercion. With this in mind, this dissertation asks: what is the role of radical imagination in not only envisioning the destruction of existing social structures but in conjuring up and bringing forth abolitionist futures?

In the growing body of academic literature on the subject, abolition is most often considered from the perspective of political theory. In media, contemporary abolitionists are often portrayed as radical militants, who desire violence and destruction. These accounts of abolition do not sufficiently consider the creative impulse that is inherent to abolitionist thought. Black creative imagination, I argue, is fundamental to abolitionism as in itself a form of social critique that draws on speculative imagination to deconstruct reality. In this project, I turn to creative imagination expressed in the twentieth- and twenty-first century black-authored literary and artistic texts that envision the abolition of the social world by imagining alternative futures and speculating about new ways of being in the world. By engaging a range of aesthetic forms across several genres and mediums, I trace abolitionist thinking in black speculative fiction, contemporary multi-media art, and digital activist culture precisely in order to suggest the importance of taking seriously the imaginative potential of abolitionism.

The examples of imaginative cultural criticism, as it pertains to abolitionist thought, can be located in the science fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois and in the horror fiction of Jewelle Gomez, in the contemporary mixed-media art of Titus Kaphar and Harmonia Rosales, as well as in digital art produced by digital users on social media platforms. These creative works uncover the ways in which abolitionist imaginary makes an appearance in black cultural and intellectual production that is not immediately considered to be ‘political,’ let alone abolitionist. Nevertheless, as I suggest, it is precisely these obscure creative works of abolitionist imagination that can help understand the many contingencies of abolitionist thought in the present day and, more precisely, help answer the question of what it means to locate and engage in the practice of radical hope in the face of insurmountable violence in slavery’s afterlife.

This dissertation asks how the theological anthropologies of T. F. Torrance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Willie Jennings help Christians diagnose and subvert the idolatry of our current racial imagination. It concludes that an idol we can call “whiteness” competes with Christ to function as the mediator of social identity, our goal and ideal human, and the icon held between us. This idolatry interferes with our ability to become the people we are meant to be together in Christ by the power of the Spirit. This theological anthropology enables us to identify the idol of whiteness at work in popular media like blockbuster movies, and it equips us to undermine this idol through our engagement of the arts, popular or otherwise, so that we might together develop a new, healthier, and holier imagination.

A theology of institutions is dependent upon an imagination sparked by the cross and shaped by the hope of the resurrection. Creative destruction is the institutional process of dying so that new life might flourish for the sake of others. Relying upon the institutional imagination of James K.A. Smith, the institutional particularity of David Fitch, and L. Gregory Jones’ traditioned innovation, creative destruction becomes a means of institutional discipleship. When an institution practices creative destruction, it learns to remember, imagine, and be present so that it might cultivate habits of faithful innovation. As institutions learn to take up their cross a clearer telos comes into view and collaboration across various organizations becomes possible for a greater good. Institutions that take up the practice of creative destruction can reimagine, reset, restart or resurrect themselves through a kind of dying so that new life can emerge. Creative destruction is an apologetic for an institutional way of being-in-the-world for the sake of all beings-in-the-world.

My dissertation offers an interpretation of twentieth century political thought which emphasizes the influence of dystopian images, themes, and anxieties. Drawing examples from philosophy, literature, and social science, I show how negative visions of future society have played an important critical function in our contemporary understanding of freedom, power, and responsibility. In contrast to those who associate dystopia with cynicism or despair, I aim to provide a more nuanced and sympathetic account of a mode of thinking which gives twentieth century political thought much of its distinctiveness and vitality, and continues to inform ethical and political judgment in our time. Throughout the dissertation, I offer commentaries on the emergence and decline of modern utopianism (Chapter 1); Huxley’s and Orwell’s seminal dystopian novels (Chapter 2); the role of paradigmatic dystopian images related to totalitarianism, mass society, and technocracy in post-war political discourse (Chapter 3) and; the innovative contributions to these discourses made by Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault (Chapter 4).

Humans make a variety of choices every day. Some of these choices are pretty mundane like whether to eat pancakes or oatmeal for breakfast. Others cost a little more, have a little bit of a longer impact, like which vacuum cleaner to buy on Amazon. And finally, there are choices that we don’t make very often—maybe even just once, that have enormous consequences in our lives like whether to choose Duke for graduate school. Deciding to choose one option over a set of alternatives involves imagining the future value that could be obtained by making those choices. Research on value-based decision making has recently begun to assess the impact of memory-related processes in making prospective decisions. Given that remembering the past and imagining the future rely on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms, researchers have investigated how imagining the future and remembering the past shift choice behavior. However, much of this research has focused on relatively abstract choices made in a laboratory setting rather than potentially more impactful long-term decisions that we make in everyday life. Overall, it is unclear to what extent memory-related systems impact a range of choices that humans make in everyday life from minor financial transactions to consequential life choices. Across three studies, I examine the role of the constructive memory process of imagination in decisions between shorter-term monetary rewards available at different temporal delays as well as longer-term consequential life choices like career decisions. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of past research on the role of constructive memory processes in making decisions. In chapter 2 (Study 1), after rehearsal of hypothetical imagined future events, younger adults and older adults made choices between larger-later and smaller-sooner monetary rewards. Some of the trials included a cue that invoked the imagined future event whereas other trials did not include a cue. Younger adults were more likely to choose larger, delayed monetary rewards on trials where the imagined future event was cued compared to trials without a cue. However, older adults did not show an effect of cued imagination. Across age groups, functional neuroimaging data revealed that trials with an imagination cue elicited greater engagement of regions that are part of the default mode network including the posterior cingulate cortex, angular gyrus, and medial prefrontal cortex. This network is commonly engaged during thinking about past memories as well as imagining the future in many studies that did not focus on decision making. Interestingly, this difference in neural activity did not vary across age groups even though the behavioral effect of the cue was limited to younger adults. In Chapter 3, I explore the effects of imagining previous successes and failures on choices between larger-later and smaller-sooner monetary rewards (Studies 2a & 2b). I find no conclusive evidence of differences in decisions based on whether people imagined successes or failures, even when comparing to a non-imagined, emotionally neutral control condition. Finally, in chapter 4, I extend this work into more complex career decision making. In a pilot study (Study 3), greater enjoyment of an imagined future career was associated with increased preference for that career option. Given the small and variable effects of imagining the future on decision making in Studies 1-3, two additional studies (Study 4a & 4b) evaluated the effects on decision making of an individual’s ability to vividly visualize, a different cognitive measure potentially relevant to thinking about and imagining the future. Using multivariate analyses, we found that vividness of visual imagery along with a set of individual difference measures related to future time perspective, self-efficacy, and well-being were associated with a set of variables crucial to career decision making. Together, these studies qualify our understanding of the role of imagination and visual imagery in decision making from choices between small rewards in the laboratory and consequential life choices. Overall various forms of imagination had relatively small and inconsistent effects on both laboratory-based and real-world decisions, whereas visual imagery had a moderate and consistent shared effect on real world decisions. The findings have broad implications for guiding prospective decisions in humans across the life span. For example, educational institutions currently have little to no focus on imagination and imagery in guiding developing students toward their future lives. There are critical opportunities in higher education to integrate imagination and imagery into living and learning communities to support students in their transitions to independent and rewarding careers.

People expend a great deal of time and energy telling each other stories of events that are known to be invented. These fictional narratives—emerging from novels, films, television shows, radio dramas, and other media—can nevertheless leave an impact once a book’s cover is closed or the theater lights toggle on. This dissertation characterizes memories of fiction, a phenomenon both commonplace and understudied within empirical psychology. Not only is characterizing this behavior valuable in its own right, understanding how people remember and recruit memories of fiction also holds theoretical implications: any theory of memory which does not allow or account for how and why people recollect and use memories of events they know to be fiction is incomplete.

In Chapter 1, I knit together the theoretical precedent from prior work in autobiographical memory, mental models, and more, for considering memories of fiction as part of the “autobiographical record.” In subsequent chapters and across six studies, I examine the assumptions of this claim empirically. In Chapters 2 through 4, I characterize the subjective experience and function of memories of fiction by adapting established measures of autobiographical remembering across four studies, such as the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (AMQ), Centrality of Event (CES) scale, and Talking About Life Experiences (TALE) questionnaire (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006; Bluck et al., 2005; Rubin et al., 2003). I find that people readily ascribe phenomenological vivacity and functional significance to memories of fiction, and that these reports follow the same patterns as reports of memories of lived experience. On average, memories of fiction are less vivid and significant than personal memories, but not as a hard-and-fast-rule. Thus, these first four chapters provide evidence for claiming that the differences between memories of fiction and memories of lived experience are of degree, rather than kind. Chapter 5 (Studies 5 and 6) explore the extent to which memories from works of fiction are recruited to fulfill similar directive functions as autobiographical memories, especially in the absence of lived experience. Chapter 6 concludes by summarizing this body of work and a discussion of notable differences between memories of fiction and lived experience.

Playing Incarnation recognizes that the imagination is at the center holistic learning, and seeks to present a pedagogical model that focuses on inspiring and training the imagination through models of play. The model arose from an experience based model of learning implemented at Grace Lutheran Church of River Forest, Illinois, between 2012 and 2016; and the resulting research into neurological processes of learning. The research presented here begins with understanding how Christian education literature since the 1990’s has recognized and employed the imagination in education, finding Maria Harris’ model, presented in Teaching and Religious Imagination as foundational for a pedagogy of the imagination. Then, the imagination is explored through historical Christian thought to see how the imagination has been conceived by the western tradition of the church, drawing a theological picture of the divine imagination as a foundation for human imagination. This picture is influenced by Robin Stockitt’s Imagination and the Playfulness of God, and Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God. The research then turns to understanding the neurological processes that form the imagination, following David Hogue’s Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past, and using the story of John, a student, as a case study. Finally, the structures and forms of play are explored, following Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and Courtney Goto’s The Grace of Playing, and then using the faith education model from Grace Lutheran to understand how play structure triggers and trains the imagination in Christian forms of life. The result argues that faith education trains students’ imaginations to construe reality through the gospel, continually reinforced by experiences that practice Christian forms of life, resulting in forming a person as an icon of the Incarnation.

This project elucidates the politics of imagination in the United States and interrogates the conditions of democratic imagination in particular. I evaluate the role of imagination in political theory and in United States history, contextualizing my theoretical arguments through analyses of the Revolution and Founding and through a case study of the Populist movement of the late 19th century. I treat imagination as a productive and representative social power that is constituted in relation to the everyday terrain on which subjects, discourses, and material realities are formed and practiced. Imagination plays a paradoxical role in the history of political theory: it is a fundamental condition of political community, and yet it has the potential to transgress any given configuration of political order. Democratic theorists commonly respond to this paradox by moving to one side of it. Those concerned with democratic stability and belonging seek to ground imagination in some incontestable cultural authority; those concerned with democratic dynamism and freedom take the power of imagination to be illimitable. Constructing a conversation between Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Bakhtin, Hannah Arendt, and Populism, I argue that freedom requires attending to the everyday tensions between the stabilizing and dynamic powers of imagination. Contemporary mergers of capitalism, technology, and administrative power centralize political imagination by incorporating, concealing, or destroying competing cultural forms and practices. For the promise of freedom to survive, and at times even flourish, it is thus crucial to cultivate dynamic traditions, institutions, practices, and dispositions that can harbor emergent imaginings of democracy.